A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE EARLE  (continued)

PM: What would you say are your biggest obstacles at the moment, and how are you approaching them?

SE: My biggest obstacles at the moment? I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself. If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything. If I'm bogged down doing something, it's never anybody else, it always turns out to be me. It may take me some time to admit that, because once I admit it, I actually have to take some action. Sometimes a rest for me is just procrastinating about admitting that it's me and getting on with it. If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.

PM: I know you are a spiritual kind of guy. Does it have any particular slant, Christian, Buddhist, or otherwise?

SE: No, almost none whatsoever. I think that you can get to God almost any of those ways, and I've known people that have gotten to God in various ways. I used to think that there wasn't a God, and then came to think, "Well, there's probably a God, but there's no way anybody's getting to Him through organized religion," and that's arrogant. I doubt very seriously if any people that work up here at the diocese are any closer to getting into Heaven than I am. But I think it's possible for a person who goes to Mass every morning and works with that belief system to reach God. I don't know about Heaven and Hell, my belief system doesn't include that, but that doesn't mean that I'm right, it just means that it's not important to me. It's not an issue, I don't have a dog in that fight. But I'm really close to some people with a really strict Judeo-Christian orientation. I would tend to have more in common with someone who was a Buddhist, simply because I find Buddhism more tolerant than any other belief system I've run across.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre. There's nothing in their holy tenets that supports the killing that's gone on. It's the youngest of all major religions, it's only 500 years old. It recognizes all the Old Testament and New Testament prophets and Buddha, and Christ specifically. It's not anti-Christian, we've been told a lot of shit about it.

Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get. Luckily, I travel a lot and can afford to do such a thing. But I'm retarded, I have a hard time sitting on the floor and crossing my legs, or doing yoga to get to God. Absolute spiritual retard. If I wasn't hit over the head with the Grand Canyon, sunrises and sunsets... I cannot afford to miss sunsets. I bought my house, the one material thing I own that's worth anything, because of how it faces west. My poor ex-wife, she wanted to see the closet space and stuff, wanted to know if everything worked. I walked in, and the sun happened to be setting in this huge plate glass window, and I said, "Okay, I'll take it." It's one of the reasons we're not married anymore. Luckily, I ended up with the house, because she actually hated the joint. I feel bad about that sometimes. But I bought it for the sunsets, and I need to see every sunset I can, and I need to not miss meteor showers.

PM: Were you out, too, the other night at 4 AM?

SE: Oh yeah, it's dark where we live, I just had to walk out in the backyard. But I'm never going to reach it by looking inside of me, I need to be hit over the head continually with proof positive that there is a God.  continue

print (PDF)      listen      archives      puremusic home